Thousands Without Power For Hours In Northeast Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) — More than 20,000 electric customers in Northeast Philadelphia were without service this morning because of a problem at a substation. Traffic was also snarled along Roosevelt Boulevard and nearby streets where traffic lights were out and police officers had to direct traffic.

PECO spokesman Ben Armstrong says crews had to clear smoke from a building at the Longshore substation in the city’s Holmesburg neighborhood to determine the cause of this morning’s outage.

Armstrong says a breaker problem may be to blame but it was too early to say.

The outage was reported around 4:45am and affected largely residential areas of Northeast Philadelphia.

As a result, traffic lights along the Roosevelt Boulevard from Harbison Avenue up to Holme Avenue were not working. Police set up barricades and cross traffic was not allowed across the Boulevard.

Riverside Correctional Facility in Northeast Philadelphia announced it was not accepting visitors today due to the power outage.

In addition, SEPTA had many buses that use the Boulevard on detours near the impacted areas.